Background noise

You focus on the detail and you end up missing the whole. This is not cheap holistic philosophy though: what can be conveyed is what can be put to words, image or sound but, as much as a photograph only brings back the memory of a memory, what's communicated is but a
shorthand version of what reality actually consists of.

Thus, while walking Tokyo at its misguidingly lackadaisical pace, the Shibuyanjukuppongi-ish 

pictures seen on the internet and on Lonely planets impose their sensorial grids on reality,
making the occasional visitor forcibly deaf and blind to the actual flow of the city's life.

It's kids singing to themselves on their way to school, teenagers absorbed in their books
sleepwalking off the train, cans of whisky and soda leisurely drunk at 9am on a workday,
construction workers, shoeless, sprawled on the ground during lunchbreak.

Real estate agents sitting on emptly plot of lands on Sundays, for hours on end, with a foldable
picnic chair and a mobile phone as sole companions. Elderly persons on wheelchairs lovely
lifted onto vans, leaving home headed to senior-daycare centers, their middle-aged sons
waving goodbye beyond the windshield.

The spiritual bargaining taking place in late night Shinto shrines, expressed through the bows, handclaps and recollection of lonely devouts. Bicycle brakes screeching painfully on sidewalks,
the two riders acknowledging the near-crash staring at each other, in mute and expressionless Japanese contempt.

And the small groups of Vietnamese students loudly hanging out in parks, the busloads of
Chinese tourists powershopping their way through Ginza. The tattoed flocks of young
caucasians and the confused herds of older ones, the Thai girls in kimono
and the Malay in hijab.

Rows of bicycles toppled over by the wind, myriads of umbrellas forgotten by the time rain lifts.
The 5pm chimes and the cicadas in the summer, the sweet potato truck's song and
the cawing of crows.

Unnoticed as they may be they make the city what it is.
And this city is the very place where i want to be.

Still, but not inert.

The talk of the town

"What do you think, shall we go home now?" says the woman to the turtle. She lifts the animal from her bicycle's basket and puts her mouth close to the now airborne reptile's ear; the only approximation of an answer comes in the form of some slow wiggling of legs.
The covered commercial arcade is pretty busy around noon but no one seems to notice the peculiar interspecies conversation going on.
Or maybe everyone does, but it takes more than granny holding consultations with her cold-blooded pet to open a breach in the Japanese mask of indifference people wear in public places.
All in all it is not seldom that amongst the shoppers of the neighbourhood an elderly woman in punk/new wave attire with a big plush tiger under her arm makes her appearance.
At the supermarket, the usually boisterous brat at the register doesn't even flinch when
handing her the receipt.
Neither does the lady with the bright green hairpiece with small toys hanging from it raise any eyebrows along the aisles of the local grocery store.

This widespread lack of reaction to visual stimuli is anyway overshadowed by the utmost indifference the spoken word is  faced with. The incessant and ubiquitous announcements in all public spaces may be held as culprits in this desensitizing of the Japanese ear, try repeating "watch your step" fifty times in a row and all meaning disappears,but that would imply ignoring how the real national sport of Japan is the monologue.
That is hitorigoto, speaking to onself extensively and not without emphasis.
In a country where people will turn into words, spoken out loud, all of their basic feelings, to pay attention to what the persons around you say would amount to a full-time activity; it is then no surprise how people talking to themselves in a loud voice hardly draw any attention here.
"It's cold", "i'm tired", "i'm hungry", "what's this?": if a newborn baby had the ability to articulate his cries into words he would express thoughts suitable as background soundtrack for the average japanese social environment.

Family and work create a much deeper intimacy so that from a colleague one could eavesdrop bolder statements along the lines of "my belly hurts: it is diarrhea!" or a doubt-ridden stream of conciousness like "was it this i put it isn't it i must buy potatoes and the train smelled funny but working overtime is such where is the tape gone Tuesday evening maybe...".
In the household monologues can reach astonishing levels of stylistic complexity, a mongrel lingo reminiscent of cut-up techniques applied to the speaking in tongues of the ecstatics.

A foreigner struggling with the mastering of the local language should better abandon any hope of relying onto feedback from his conversational counterparts to pinpoint his mistakes and inaccuracies: a polite smile, a nod, a blank stare or total unresponsiveness are the name of the game here.
One may as well be speaking Lojban with a thick Schwyzerdutsch accent, the conveying of meaning through spoken words is not expected and neither it is sought after.

Now accustomed to the crowded soliloquy Tokyo's masses appear to be launched into, an attempt at dialogue on the streets draws my attention in Senzoku-dori, the run-down commercial street linking the brothels of ancient Fujiwara to the selfie-hungry crowds of Asakusa.
An unassuming elderly man, senile or intoxicated or both, halts his slo-mo stroll and stands in
front of the fishtank in the window of a restaurant.
Not yet turned into someone's dinner, fishes swim around while the old guy firmly stares at one and says in a friendly tone:"I betcha you're really tasty, aren't you?".
I smile and walk by, commenting to myself the funny scene.

Hidden in plain sight

It's a slow day at work, the nine of us despondently walk around the open space, from office to warehouse and back, looking for something which could at least vaguely resemble a task to perform.
It is at times like these that Tsudanuma-san strikes up conversation with me, employing this forced slack to practice his English and share some stories about his daily life.
There's not much chance for small talk in this company, in the office personal relations are
quite cold and detached, so i'm glad to hear reports about his quest for the ideal pillow
or the weekly fights with the car's battery.
Sometimes though, his stories end abruptly mid-flow, as if the narrative had just been about to cross into some forbidden territory.
For instance, he would tell me how he did spend some months in my home country, on more occasions also,but at my inquiries about places and reasons for his stay he'd come back
with a scant "here and there, doing stuff".

The Japanese are indeed very private persons, you could spend a year or more with the same colleague sitting beside you without getting to know the exact place where he lives.
Day after day sharing the same desk and exchanging casual conversation but still the intimacy
doesn't go beyond the name of the train line he uses on his commute.
When some complicity has been established you may be eventually told which Tokyo ward he calls his home, narrowing down the potential areas of residence from the overall count of twenty three wards to one. And that's about it.

Still, such abrupt changings of subject, those sudden silences where moments ago words yet smoothly flew, seem to hint at some dark or shameful secret, some past life shrouded in a carefully constructed mystery careless conversation was just about to end up unveiling.
Not that Tsudanuma-san's physique hints at some previous role in a spy story-like scenario:
a scrawny man in his mid fifties, bespectacled eyes under a hairline which already beat retreat,
his funny hopping gait would hardly recall the action movie hero's resolute stride.
Were there indeed some mystery hidden beneath his unassertive looks, one could
well presume it wouldn't be a dignified one.


And so the role of the clown fell upon him, the way in which even the smallest social group
has its members settling down in well-defined characters, relieving interaction of all negotiating processes and providing everyone a commonly understood script to go by in daily joint activities. Even more so in Japan, where everything reeking of personal bias or opinion is meticulously
avoided in public situations.

Consequently, here at work we have the alpha males, sales people of course, the babe, the sophisticated and fashion-conscious youngster,the nerdy and well-mannered girl, the stranded divorcee in her late forties, the funny fatso, the sensible young mother and the zealous know-it-all. And the foreigner, yours truly, of course.

But there is more to Tsudanuma-san than just the company's underdog: in the back of the
warehouse, two shelves loaded with row after row of cheap brandy are the sole witnesses of his
true self being disclosed, of him eventually exposing that purported second life of his.
Halfway through uneasy conversation, too many points to be avoided to let words flow unhinged,
he plunges two fingers in his wallet and provides a slightly crumpled, analog-era photograph.
A quasi-afro halo of black-hair looms upon muscles carved in marble, the young man in white
ballet attire, just like the other girls and boys around him.
"This is me, and this is my wife."he points discretely, "this is how we met".
His extended stay on the continent, thus, was not only the peak of his professional career as
a ballet dancer, it was also the occasion to meet his then, up until now, wife.

Conversation follows and further details emerge, but that doesn't belong here.
What does is the image of that young man, his will and hopes and sore joints,
superimposed on the office's clown and invisible to all.

Hearing voices

Convenience creates its own patrons: just as demand for a new product is created via 

advertisement, that sudden craving, that unforeseen hankering may rear its not-that-ugly head 

all of a sudden, in a city paved to saturation with supermarkets of all scales.

Be it competition on prices, a carefully differentiated range of goods or the air-conditioned sanctuary on offer, more often than not one finds himself inside a mini-market or convenience store without even perceiving the decision process taking place in his own head.

For those of the ethylic persuasion it may have been booze, while those provided with a whole set of sweet teeth shall be drawn by the endless iteration of kashi-pan, sweet buns in a cornucopia of often daring fillings and toppings.

Whatever the reason may be, it is definitely the superfluous that is longed for, accompanied by

the sense of unfulfillment consumerism rests upon: that feeling which have one listlessly bump from aisle to aisle, like a shark in an always-too-small aquarium pursuing an ever unfocused prey.

To pace this wandering along the stations of inconspicuous consumption, the background sonic texture is an interpolation of j-muzak and the machine-like formulas of politeness store clerks

carpet-bomb customers with.

For the first-time visitor of Japan these may be amusing, a slightly extended stay in the country will then contribute to make the ubiquitous manners-mantra quite annoying to most foreign ears.

It is only when living steadily here that this mechanical and purely vocal urbanity eventually 

settles into one's nervous system: suffices for a foreign resident to  briefly visit  his home-country

to notice how much all those over-zealous "welcome", "thank you" and "please, come again"s 

are suddenly missed.

While in Japan though one hardly notices the clerks looping through this cultivated routine, it takes some extra effort by one of the cashiers, a more personal take on this mandatory chanting of pleasantries, to draw the attention of the absent-minded customer.

My back to the register, eyes frantically looking for the discounted goods, a high-pitched chirping 

of super-polite and formal salutations shakes me from the cheapo shopping trance.

Magical creatures of the woods seem to have a hard time making ends meet, it occurs to me, 

if a fairy is working the late shift at a convenience store. More likely than that, some high-school 

girl is practicing her cartoon-grade cuteness skills while earning some pocket money on top of it. 

Face the register now and reality appears to be suffering a case of very poor dubbing: a barely teenage voice lip-synched by a woman who looks well on her way into her fifties.

Working the register has one's hands become sore, swollen and red but this doesn't manage to cast a shadow on her bright smile. She is fast, efficient and polite: were it not for the eerily squeaky voice she would have been quite the incarnation of Japanese cashier etiquette.

Lest this woman ends up being thought of as a freakish specimen, it must be stressed how changing voice register is very common practice in everyday life here. Men too will climb a few tones up the pentagram when talking on the phone, the locals maintain it makes the voice more understandable, while women pitch-shift in order to boost cuteness and femininity, sometimes with undesired results akin to the ones mentioned before.

On the workplace too the voice changes according to the rank of the addressee: the manager and the temp will hear a notably different intonation coming from the very same employee. 

Is this due to the relational nature of the Japanese language itself, or to the dichotomy between tatemae (public stance) and honne (true feelings) which permeates all of Japanese social life,

I couldn't say.

It seems like in every Japanese person there is a little bit of an actor though, promptly into

character whenever social life demands.

Change of perspective and it is me now manning the register: sore, swollen and red hands notwithstanding I greet and thank each and every customer in full compliance with local etiquette.

The high-pitched middle-aged clerk this time a customer, she puts a way overfilled basket of groceries beside the cashier, waiting for the barcodes to complete their procession towards the

final check.

A bright, serene smile beaming from her face, the size and nature of her shopping suggests she is a mother and wife planning the family's next few meals. Her voice, though acute, moves into a more regular, adult-woman-like range; her kindness and friendliness unchanged show how her working persona isn't then that far from her real everyday self.

Overthink cultural differences and you end up overlooking the people around you, I tell myself as she heads back home leaving a heart-warming "thank you" behind. 

I hold tight to that warmth and try to infuse it in my greetings to the customer next in line.

How to become invisible

Things, not being there, may be more evident to the eye as they stand out in their absence.
It is the cleanliness of the asphalt here, to the extent that asphalt clean may be, the absence of
cigarette butts, dead leaves and the nondescript dust-coloured aggregates which normally would line a fairly busy road, that may discretely suggest the impression of unusualness.
Still, this being the quite high-end central Tokyo ward of Minato, were garbage strewn along the two lanes, its quantity and nature wouldn't manage to build the complex geography of debauchery my hometown's county roads can manifest.
There the occasional pedestrian daring to make his route by the speeding cars would have,
unraveling along his steps, the timeline of many a satiated and desperate weekends spelled out
in the unambiguous characters of empty beer bottles, boxes of erectile dysfunction drugs and
benzodiazepines, cigarettes and condoms.

Yet no seedy discos and prostitutes by the roadside around this downtown neighbourhood, rather Rolls-Royce and Ferrari's dealerships, plus a scattering of eateries to assuage the hungry
cavalry of white collars on their hectic lunchbreak charge.
Artless local landmark Tokyo tower and, on the other end of Japan's post-war architectural
continuum, the stranded spaceship of the Shakaden temple stand here within sight to point 

out the chaotic nature of the cityscape furthermore.

The eye we left before perusing the asphalt now encounters a pair of worn-off sneakers pattering along the sidewalk's rim. Lifting up from the black surface in the all-encompassing July glare,
can then be seen that wearing them is a gaunt old man, back hunched by age and by the use of one those cruelly, inexplicably short-handled Japanese brooms.
His loose, faded t-shirt and trousers flutter around his bones the way a plastic bag stuck in the branches of a tree vainly struggles for flight.
The sweat dammed from his eyes by a towel tightly wrapped around his forehead, lightly
panting, mouth half-opened in the thick, hot summer air.
By this time of the year the city's air feels heavy on the skin, as though gravity had come gradually increasing after May's heavy rains left. Nights hardly bring any relief and one is left cherishing the memories of winter's dryness, static electricity visible in tiny sparks when undressing in darkness before sleep.

Heat and oppressive humidity notwithstanding the man keeps on steadily striving to accomplish his self-appointed task: palm by palm, the north-eastern part of the crossroad shall be swept clean of all garbage lying there.
Were a sad sarcasm to be used, this could be dubbed a form of housekeeping: the man calls his home the concrete banks of the canal which flows nearby, his roof the highway overpass.
Cardboard and blue plastic tarpaulin sheets, Japan's ubiquitous picnic implement, are what homeless rely on to build their shelters. The abandoned memory of someone's outdoors party repurposed as some destitute one's means to own, though hardly dignified, at least some indoors of sorts.

The ghost of an active role within society still haunting his world view, no matter how long out in the past the trail scattered with the shards of his life does stretch: he took on himself a duty, as unrequired as it may be, by means of which his presence in this city shall be justified this one more day.

As it is often the case for those in such a plight, he is intensely ignored by the steady flow of people who, on wheel or foot, move across this road.
Whether this is a display of insensitivity, or rather the Japanese expression of pity by sparing its object the humiliation of being acknowledged, it is hard to judge for the Western mind.

Mirrorwings

The omen of humidity to come floats in the late spring air this evening, surreptitiously gnawing

 away at this serene lull with flashbacks of summer's scorching heat.

The two of us drift toward this little park by habit, to seal the closure of the day with some beers

and the long-yearned-for relief of native conversation. Foreigners with little more than a year 

spent in the country, the quiet of Tokyo's nights still able to have us stop mid conversation, 

still stupefied by how, once sound asleep, this sprawling concrete titan can shrink its sonic 

presence down to an unobtrusive background hum.

The empty children playground, its jungle gym now unattended, its swings left hanging

 in motionless wait, underscores the tranquility of the setting further more; I notice 

by the way my tone has dwindled: it must have been centuries upon centuries of this soundscape

 that moulded  the sound of Japanese into the gentle murmur it is now.

Hardly 9pm, the sky long pitch-black dark, the adjacent street is all but desolate: on bicycle or 

foot still passersby appear: commuters back from overtime, schoolboys with bats

 or kendo swords, delivery guys on late shift, dogs on walks with their ownees, 

exchange students with mismatched groceries in bulging plastic bags, the occasional 

senior citizen devoted to exercise.

Cats negotiating mating or turf wars, the moon aloof along its nightly commute, park's benches

periodically offer sanctuary to smartphone and tobacco devotees.

Somewhere halfway through her twenties, the girl chooses to sit close to a street light, 

her back to the scant pedestrian traffic. 

The birdcage she brought here being set down on the same bench, it takes some fluttering of 

wings for the parroquet inside it to settle on its perch; then silence can resume.

After some rummaging the girl produces a rectangular mirror from her bag, to be held facing the

cage's unobstructed side. At this unsuitable time of the day, birdsong begins.

The parroquet entertains its illusory host with mellow chirping, the way the lively melody
pauses and restarts paced at an oddly conversation-like meter. The very nature of this
solitary dialogue though only evident to avian logic.
In the meantime the girl's other hand holds a smartphone, swiftly writing messages with the
sole thumb, the restless finger dancing in the upwards aura of the screen.
Be it glass or pixel the source that it is drawn from, ersatz-companionship appears to be
all but a nuisance for those within as well as for those without the cage.